The Last Bread, A Play in One Act.

London: Labour Publishing Company, 1926 (May). Bates's first published book was issued as part of the "Plays for the People Series." Dedication: "To Edmund E. Kirby [an influential teacher] in deep gratitude." Bates later referred to the play as "my angry-young-man broadside" in which "I had caustically poured some of my bitterness about the post-war twenties, not having read Knut Hamsun's Hunger for nothing...[I expressed] my bitterness at the cankering poverty and dole-queues of the twenties in a searing one-act play" (Vanished World 188; Blossoming World 8, 24). In the play Jim, on strike from work, his wife Emma, and their daughter Rose are reduced to their last sixpence, candle, and morsel of bread.